122. This is discussed at three places in the Qur'an.
(Surah AI 'Imran 3:93 )
states: 'All food was lawful to the Children of Israel except what Israel made
unlawful to themselves before the revelation of the Torah. Tell them: "Bring
the Torah and recite any passage of it if you are truthful".'
(Surah al-Nisa' 4:160) mentions that because of the misdeeds of the Children of Israel: 'We forbade
them many clean things which had earlier been made lawful to them.' And now
the present verse says that because of the transgression of the Jews, God forbade
unto them 'all beasts with claws; and the fat of oxen and the sheep except the
fat which is either on their backs or their entrails or that which sticks to
the bones'. If these three verses are taken together, it becomes clear that
the differences between Islamic law and Jewish law with regard to what is lawful
and what is unlawful in animal foods stem from two considerations. First, that
several centuries before the revelation of the Torah, Isra'il (Jacob, peace
be on him) had given up the use of certain things, which his descendants also
abstained from consuming. The result was that Jewish jurists considered them
to be absolutely unlawful and recorded their prohibition in the Torah. They
included the camel, the hare and the rock-badger, the prohibition of which is
mentioned in the fragments of the Torah embodied in the Bible. (See Leviticus
ll: 4; Deuteronomy 14: 7) But the Our'an challenges the Jews to come forward
with the Torah itself and show where any of those things had been declared unlawful.
Their inability to do so shows that those interdictions must have been later
interpolations into the Torah.
Second, when the Jews rebelled against the Law revealed by God and set themselves
up as their own law-givers, they made several things unlawful for themselves,
and as a punishment God allowed them to remain a prey to that misunderstanding.
These include birds with claws such as the ostrich, seagull and water-hen, and
also the fat of oxen and sheep. In the Bible prohibitions of these kinds have
been interpolated among the injunctions of the Torah. (See Leviticus 3:17; 7:22-3;
ll:16-18; Deuteronomy 14:14-16.) But
(Surah al-Nisa' 4:160) shows that those things
had not been made unlawful by the Torah itself. They had rather been prohibited
after the time of Jesus, and history bears witness to the fact that the present
Jewish law was given a definitive formulation by the Jewish jurist, Yehudah,
towards the end of the second century of the Christian calendar.
It might be asked in view of what has been mentioned above, why the expression
'We forbade for them' is employed in
(Surah al-Nisa' 4:160) The answer is that
declaration through a Prophet or a heavenly Book is not God's only way of prohibiting.
Another way is to allow fraudulent law-makers and sham jurists to gain predominating
influence upon God's rebels. These in turn deprive them of many good, clean
things of life by making them believe that they are prohibited. The first kind
of prohibition is an act of His mercy, whereas the second kind is in the nature
of a curse and punishment from God.